Circle Dance: O,The Don,The Mike,The Wit and Baby Blue Ivy

What a wild ride this month! …had a crazy little dream the other night…

“Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it.”

The Circle Dream. I walked out unto my very large porch overlooking Manhattan. I walked down the steps to the pool imaging I would continue do this well into my hundreds.

I turned the water on to fill up large jugs and enjoyed tossing water into the pool while the fountain filled it up. At the deep end it filled to the top like an infinity pool, I worried about overflow but the auto system turned it off.

I tossed off my pareo and dove in. I floated end to end on my back joyfully many times.

When finished I wrapped myself in a large towel and walked to the waiting limo. I tossed off the towel and jumped inside. The driver knew exactly where to go. Just top to bottom NYC. A loop, a circle around NYC. At Times Square I popped my bare foot out the window for fun and wiggled it. I was thoroughly happy to enjoy this ride and determined to make it a frequent habit.

I had this dream just a few days after a “touch-point” conversation with a friend in a famous Little Italy restaurant called Angelos. That day, watery planet, Uranus, ruled by Neptune, swam into Pisces, the fish, for the next 80 years. Wet.

My friend, Jonathan Porcelli, and I talked about the first time he came here with a beeper salesperson, named Luella Vecchhino (or something like that) in the 80’s. Both long-time New Yorkers, we spoke about NYC landmarks in our lives, how we often circle back and return to them years later, as kind of a check in. Even having the conversation downtown on Mulberry Street in Little Italy, where my ancestors came to this country as Eastern Europeans, while today, swirling and swimming around us, the stories of 8 million people in the 800 languages spoken here, felt Time Travelerish.

This month, was a circle and time travel loop meme of Groundhog Day, Black History Month, personal and celebrity love, deaths, rebirths, doves, demons and dogs. A releasing of doves.

From the orbits of planets like energetic Mars retrograding to big planet Uranus changing signs into Pisces after being in Aquarius for 84 years. Uranus, the planet of surprise, upheavals and of genius, gets soaked in Pisces, the divine seeker who lives between worlds dissolving boundaries finding spiritual heights or massive delusions in the vast ocean of unconsciousness.

Did you feel that cosmic shift? I sure did.

I recall when I apprenticed a Native American, and by year two, I was annoyed to do the same ole moon ritual again that I did last year. I was in my immature, quick fix 20’s and now, with hindsight, I love the repetition of seasons, cycles, for the layered wisdom, the circular vs. the linear. February’s full moon is called:

Ice (Celtic).

Old Moon (Cree).

Gray Moon (Pima).

Wind Moon (Creek).

Winter Moon (Taos).

Nuts Moon (Natchez).

Avunnivik Moon (Inuit).

Geese Moon (Omaha).

Bony Moon (Cherokee).

Purification Moon (Hopi).

Little bud Moon (Kiowa).

Snow Moon (Neo-Pagan).

Lateness Moon (Mohawk).

Shoulder Moon (Wishram).

Rabbit Moon (Potawatomi).

Sucker Moon (Anishnaabe).

Long Dry Moon (Assiniboine).

Little Famine Moon (Choctaw).

Storm Moon (Medieval English).

Sparkling Frost Moon (Arapaho).

Running Fish Moon (Winnebago).

Coyote Frighten Moon (San Juan).

Spruce Tips Moon (Passamaquoddy).

Raccoon Moon, Trees Pop Moon (Sioux).

Hunger Moon : Dark, Storm Moon : Full (Janic).

Snow Moon, Hunger Moon, Trappers Moon (Algonquin).

The intensity of pop culture cultural markers this month, felt to me like Groundhog Day, a yearly American ritual to determine the amount of weeks left to winter depending upon whether a groundhog sees its shadow or not.

Bill Murray in the movie “Groundhog Day,” repeating the day until he got it spiritually correct, impulsed a common term into common culture lore for a situation that continually repeats. This play on probability is now cited by everyone from economists, who point to the movie to illustrate the theory of “perfectly competitive equilibrium based on perfect information,” to Buddhists who see the film as symbolic of rebirth through a birth of selflessness.

What unfurled from Feb 1 to the new moon of Feb 21 were rounds in the time-traveling loop, a kind of Circle Dance, where layers of meaning, repeat or transcendance became more palpable than ever.

Did you feel that?

Feb 1 The Don.

On this same day legendary Don Cornelius and Mike Kelley both commit suicide.

… and you can bet your last money, it’s all gonna be a stone gas, honey! I’m Don Cornelius, and as always in parting, we wish you love, peace and soul!”

In our 95% white suburbs, even though we were pals with Debbie Huff, daughter of the legendary Gamble and Huff, Soul Train was our main musical affirmation of a happy, color-no-matter dance, contrary to the world un-toppling itself emerging from the 60’s. It was Woodstock in our paneled dens. Soul Train birthed hip-hop’s barrier breakdancing.

The Soul Train line was a metaphor for a parade of life that we all absorb. Each person can strut, we will applaud on the sidelines for our turn. You can keep coming back up for your turn to dance.

And to dial the Time-capsule …really…back, this pulsing chain, this soul train, is our very fiber.

We have the power of the beat, our heartbeat pushing us “forward” in our skins.

No matter the strife, parading is important. Parades of Native-Americans denied their circular “Ghost-dance” paraded in the public to current day (today!) Mardi Gras parades keep this beat going on.

The Mike.

If The Don gave us beat-spawned, sperm-driven, snaking DNA ladder Soul Train lines, LA artist, Mike Kelley gave us the cross-section. The Ernst Haeckelian, Dr. Seussian, cuddly-core, feminine, nurturing circle of plush pushed back in our faces, a little soiled, a little depressed.

Regenerating hydras and tree-branching nervous systems, radiating radiolarians, saint halos, surrogate plush toy mothers to puffy brains like trees. Amazing what we process in an instant visually and mentally. No wonder Dali proclaimed he was the drug, it’s heady enough work to rein in all these Me, me, me’s.

Feb 2 2.2.2012 Oh! The Memes. The Memes. Etc. Etc.

Oh this binary plane! Ponderings from my wintry nest this month…everything is perspective. Like a canary in a coal mine, I wish the groundhog seeing his shadow could be telling us about global warming or some other greater vision than how many more weeks of winter.

For a really huge perspective that same dinner conversation at Angelo’s included “The Power of Ten,” a film by Ray and Charles Eames, famed American designers.

Trust I didn’t plan this rhyming thing, but it is kitchsy cute how Memes and Eames go together,”Me” on repeat, aka “me, me” but besides Eames this month, the power of Memes to underscore time-travel intrigued me. Like Leonardo DiCaprio “Leostrutting” and re-appearing like Forrest Gump to re-enforce significant historic events via memes online, the Power of multiplying images or events to emphasize truths seems like a mystical precept. Yes, my favorite book growing up was a “A Wrinkle in Time” and I always had a crush on Doctor Who.

Feb 5 The Ma-Donna.

Madonna, give me all your luvin. Loved it. Although the time-travel mix of gladiators, voguing togas and Adidas sweats actually did make me sweat and grimace, my girlfriend redeemed and took me there with her angelic goldenness and black bird transcendance. I cheerlead for this gal. WORLD PEACE.

Did you feel that? I did.

Feb 11 You’s Done.

“When you have lived the life I’ve lived, when you’ve loved and suffered, and been madly happy and desperately sad — well, that’s when you realize you’ll never be able to set it all down. Maybe you’d rather die first.”

In a strange coincidence, Whitney’s daughter falls asleep in bathtub prior, Judy too, retreated to the privacy of her bathroom to pass on. The most intimate pool a woman dips in besides her mirror is her bath. Uncommon beauty can sometimes be too challenging to bear.

As long the chain is from Billy Holiday to Marilyn to Judy to Amy to Whitney, thankfully there are also those who can ride the Hollywood hills and valleys such as Barbra Barbra, Bette Midler, Oprah and the Ellen DeGeneres, the “odd,” the “other,”..The Game Changers. And yet, Whitney gave us her soul.

This image. Borrowed from Ulysses Carter, a friend who was Whitney’s loyal and loving PR rep.

Did you feel that? I did.

Feb 14 touch players.

Life always takes us from the maudlin to the sappy and back again. V-day turns us to thoughts of Love. Actually, Time and History really began last month with the birth of a “Star-Child”, none other than Baby Blue Ivy.

All the imaginings of what this child would look like as a combo of the parents is the celeb the love fest we began 2012 with. All this Star-Love stuff made me circle back to my own DNA chain of boyfriends/players/memes I have danced the Soul-Train line with since the first at 14. Who were they? Who am I?

Driven? From the Corvette collector (3) in my 20’s to the James Brown/Bobby Brown doppleganger with his Mercedes with TV inside in my 40’s. Wealthy? London financial guys (a Sloane Ranger with fetishes) to elder Dallas corporate men with an interest in art museums. Creative? Yep…German painters and techno dj’s among many. Intelligent-istas? Yep, that lista includes a biologista, psychologista and an anesthesiologista. And then, there is the 5-year dalliance with a music producer turned organic farmer boyfriend who for years did not know “he” was the basis for the “open relationship” status on my Facebook page, all the time thinking he was the sidekick to another boyfriend. (Well, I did have several, but like all things, it’s complicated. (Notice, I do protect the names of the innocent.)

Full disclosure, I guess I have to work a bit more on my communication skills.

Feb 15 Touching human hearts! Push. Play on.

Back to the future, same age as Liza and Bobbie Kristina, my big event at 17, was the boy who took me “there.” He was a bit of a hoodlum with Danny Terrio-infused Hollywood dreams, but the real touchy-feely memory is that he took me to visit the bearded, cool teacher who threw Raku pots on a farm and he bought me a green one. In more recent years, the most touchy-feely boyfriend relationship was orchestrated (the only word for the mechanics of this) mostly on skype being on different continents with one hot week in person. Computer Love games continued in the dark gallery video rooms we lingered in. This carnival game image is from that time.

Modern Love? We demand more from our machines, bodies, brains, senses than ever before in history. Going “there” with love will more and more be a hybrid mash of the two, seven, one million impressions experience.

“The arts are primed for some creative disruption by means of technology…”

Julie Kaganskiy

Art through “Hello, Hi Internet” and binary love experiences came through two events this month.

Hi-Touch. The first, was Uptown, with friends Nicholas Cloblence and Shirley Madhere. It was a bit rowdier than most of Greg Furman’s Luxury Marketing Council meetings with a seismic-shifting as a room of luxury marketers at FIAF, The French Institute, actual corporate marketers were…gasp…meditating together led by Francis Cholle, a corporate consultant to major industry. This Smart Guy, who danced with dervishes, (aka practiced yoga, theatre and Native American “things”) is convincing top execs to mash up linear thinking with a sense of play and intuition, at least value where it comes from to realize more profit. It’s working. He wrote the book on this, “Intuitive Compass,” a way to be intuitive and organize this nest:

From flying Nyan cats to Ryder’s cheap shots, I love the pioneering sense of play. Yep, this is how geek girls and boys spend Valentine’s Day.

Ryder Ripps, I love your nonsense.

Since these two, Ryder and Hennessy Youngman were all about V-day cuddling all night so cutely, I pop in HY’s lesser well-known paintings, given he is most known as a video-artist, perhaps these will further cement his place in art history.

Ryder again. And then there was this Dolly. Video artist, Amber Hawk Swanson, who ordered a sex doll replica, married her and then dismembered her, all online, and then turned her into a killer whale to compare the objectivation and captivity of Sea World whales and women in culture.

Did you feel that? I did.

Feb 17 nest.

Last month, I cutely organized my ponderings with some bird illustrations. This month, the birds, they came. National Geographic was delivered to me this month and I mean very geographically on my window sill. Remember the white dove who made a nest in the snow on my terrace? She and her mate took turns sitting on the nest through all kinds of winter.

Lunch with Alexandra Polier, PR for Dwell magazine, revealed Amanda Dameron’s Editor’s Note this month called “Slow Home,” about magpies and their best-of-all-birds’ nest, an architectural marvel, a “slow home.” Building from bits here and there, over time, layering. Reminding me of Wim Wenders, “Wings of Desire,” where an Angel falls in love with a human trapeze artist, slowly.

One day I heard two distinct “who” who”s and came to find out it was a white winged dove, the same Stevie Nicks sung about in her song, “The Edge of Seventeen.” Kind of Rare in NYC.

The next day, the nest and a tiny yellow baby was left unattended with a big black crow hovering over it. I was like the overseeing angel, caught in the struggle…should I keep the baby warm, so the parents can come back and the crow won’t eat it? Internet says no, parents will come. OK, no blankie from me. Result: crow ate baby. Maybe the pigeons left the nest vulnerable, maybe the baby needed transcendence. Maybe this was a releasing of doves?

Let’s be logical. The crows had a nice meal. They keep coming back to the same restaurant for a repeat performance, just like we do. The white bird returns to the nest, momentarily puzzled. For her, it’s not death, it’s time for more sex!

…and there was Madonna, all winged and black disappearing in a puff of smoke. Is this some kinda meme, Crow? (thanks Hennessy, you have taught me to think “art”)

Nah. Just a ‘nuther new full Moon coming. As the temperature begins to warm and the ground begins to thaw, earthworms appear, heralding the return of the robins and Spring. The more northern tribes knew this next March Moon as the Full Crow Moon, when the cawing of crows signaled the end of winter. The crows did circle around…courtesy of Nick Cave, with “From Her to Eternity” in “Wings of Desire.”

this description is all over the internet like a ritual itself:

Crow is an omen of change. Crows live in the void and have no sense of time, therefore being able to see past, present and future simultaneously. They unite both the light and the dark, both the inner and the outer. Crow is the totem of the Great Spirit and must be held with utmost respect. They are representations of creation and spiritual strength.

and you know I am not given to this kind of art …however, I am feeling it. All this nature in NYC, all this Internet. All this world, all this winter, wow. It’s OK, call it kitsch, call me a goth, a Celtic-lovin’ Valkyrie, an art-groupie, a Luddite, a memer of Me.

Feb 21 Wishing and Ritual.

O heck. Let’s rain dance for Spring to pop-up. Mardi Gras and the New Moon is today. Carnival is coming. C’mon. Let’s Dance.

“From the solemn gloom of the temple children run out to sit in the dust, God watches them play and forgets the priest.” Rabindranath Tagore

Where do broken hearts go? Will they find their way home?

“The touch of an infinite mystery passes over the trivial and the familiar, making it break out into ineffable music… The trees, the stars, and the blue hills ache with a meaning which can never be uttered in words.”

Recent Articles We Spawned.

"The 99th Edition of the Armory Show"
A discourse on "99% Art in The Public Realm"
http://tinyurl.com/6reef3r
99% Art in the Public Realm: A Tool for Social Change Panel: May 6, 2012
http://tinyurl.com/dxkghtn
see more at:
http://tinyurl.com/75x8aex
"Visit Isola During Salone" in Metropolis magazine
First in a series on Art, Design,Green and Architecture and Milan's Salone in April 2011
Read it here: http://tinyurl.com/4ge9nyp
"Degrees of Temporary" in Design Observer
Interview with Claudia Zanfi, co-founder of the cultural organization aMAZElab in Milan.
Read it here: http://tiny.cc/rjb0m